Page 217 - down-and-out-in-paris-and-london

been, ‘freely venturing into the lowest dens,’ etc. etc.
Bozo said that these people came to the lodging-house
several times a month. They had influence with the police,
and the ‘deputy’ could not exclude them. It is curious how
people take it for granted that they have a right to preach at
you and pray over you as soon as your income falls below a
certain level.
After nine days B.’s two pounds was reduced to one and
ninepence. Paddy and I set aside eighteenpence for our
beds, and spent threepence on the usual tea-and-two-slic-
es, which we shared—an appetizer rather than a meal. By
the afternoon we were damnably hungry and Paddy re-
membered a church near King’s Cross Station where a free
tea was given once a week to tramps. This was the day, and
we decided to go there. Bozo, though it was rainy weather
and he was almost penniless, would not come, saying that
churches were not his style.
Outside the church quite a hundred men were waiting,
dirty types who had gathered from far and wide at the news
of a free tea, like kites round a dead buffalo. Presently the
doors opened and a clergyman and some girls shepherded
us into a gallery at the top of the church. It was an evangeli-
cal church, gaunt and wilfully ugly, with texts about blood
and fire blazoned on the walls, and a hymn-book contain-
ing twelve hundred and fifty-one hymns; reading some of
the hymns, I concluded that the book would do as it stood
for an anthology of bad verse. There was to be a service after
the tea, and the regular congregation were sitting in the well
of the church below. It was a week-day, and there were only a

1 Down and Out in Paris and London